<p>My daughter is a 4.0 and “Junior” level Honors Math and Science classes. She has nearly the highest grades in both Algebra II/Trig and Chemistry this semester - yet she shows testing at 65% of her High School in Math and 61% in Science. Every student takes this test. She has self selected down to a very small group of students who have had one additional subject, at an Honors level, and with high performance. No way she is below 1/3 of her peer group.</p>
<p>Reading through the Science section questions - I am not impressed. They spend their time working through convoluted logic to get to the correct answer while presenting technical material that screams for understanding. It is like a huge distractor. I was able to get all the questions right, but not in the time frame given (took me an extra 5 minutes).</p>
<p>My daughter is beginning her ACT/PSAT test prep to take the test in the Fall - at the start of her Junior year. She will also take it at the end of her Sophomore year to allow placement in some college classes. Any suggestions would be helpful.</p>
<p>Once you realize the science section is about learning to read graphs and process data, not about your actual scientific knowledge, it’s much easier. I went from around a 25 to a 34 in science between my first and 2nd time taking it with that realization. It’s not convoluted logic, it’s a way of making sure that you have the basic skills that science classes requires, not necessarily scientific knowledge of a particular field. That’s reasonable considering that science courses don’t necessarily progress in the same sequence at all schools (like they would in math, for example) and many students would be at a severe disadvantage if there were a bunch of specific physics problems and many students don’t take physics until their senior year.</p>
<p>BTW your junior daughter shouldn’t be dual-enrolling unless she has exhausted the school’s curriculum. Take AP classes/tests instead. Don’t push her into college too early.</p>
<p>^ You must not have taken the ACT today… The science section REQUIRED you to read the entire passages and to have scientific foreknowledge.</p>
<p>Unless it’s changed DRASTICALLY in the last 2 years, yes, you need to have some basic scientific knowledge (not much) and yes you have to read the whole passage but almost all of the answers are in the texts/graphs/whatever.</p>